My address (try two)

I'm an idiot and gave you the wrong address. The other one will probably get to me, but this one is better. For now, anyway.

Andi
c/o AIM Serve
PO Box 21171
Nairobi, Kenya 00505

Sorry!

Prayer request.

Hey everybody... Just a quick prayer request for you.

My teammate Craig basically empty his bank accounts to get here and then was nailed with $600 in excess-baggage fees on the way over (and he was even spared said fees on one leg of his flight by a sweet airport lady!), so we'd really appreciate your prayers for financial provision, as he's down to about... 1000 Kenyan shillings.

Which is approximately... $13.

And we need $50 very soon so we can get our Sudan visas, plus a bunch more for transportation and other expenses.

So, yeah, please be lifting him up. We'd really like him to be able to stay with us and not have to worry about money stuff!

Also, just pray for God to work in the details with luggage and visas and all sorts of missing information. And for our teammate Cath; she's been sick.

Thanks!

Ain't no mountain high enough...

Today we climbed Mount Machakos -- actually, that's not what it's called. It's something else. I just have no idea what the real name is. (My friend is here and he's saying something about Mount Eveti. Perhaps that's what it is. Perhaps not. Does it matter?)

As we went along, we gathered more and more of a crowd. The little African children just came flowing out of the schoolyards and huts to see us strange white people. The first time someone showed them they could see their pictures on the backs of our strange camera things, they just went CRAZY. (This is Janna, showing them. This is actually a small throng of African children compared to what we had later.)















This is what I mean by CRAZY. They would do this whenever you'd take a picture or even have your camera out.















Later it was more like a little sea flowing along the mountain with us. They all wanted to hold our hands. All wanted to have their pictures taken. John and I had a disagreement about which picture I'd use here, so I put up both. I hope you're not sore about that.
















This lady was also pretty amazed by the camera thing, so we gave her a look, too. She was really pleased.














Juliana (MK, 5-years-old) was a trooper and came all the way to the top with us. She demanded not to be carried for as long as possible, but it ended up we had to take shifts at the end. I had the last mile. It was great. (I feel so sore.)















This is my favorite picture. You see tons of the little kids with these knit caps on, as if it's below zero outside. I suppose 60 or 70 degrees is cold to them.















I really can't get over how many kids there were up there, tucked away on that mountainside. You would never guess it from looking up at it from campus. As I was reflecting on it in a letter to a friend today, I can see how God used the experience to make me see the bigger picture. There are so many people out there that don't know Jesus--people we can't even see. And I'm just so thankful God brought me here, if for nothing else than to further realize the reality of the lost. There are so many. It's hard not to get overwhelmed.

My new pet.

Alright, so, today I got to play with a chameleon. Yeah, go ahead, be jealous. (I would be.) The little MKs found them and brought them over so we could see. (Did I mention I love missionary kids? I do.)


I wasn't really all that scared of it, but I hope you're enjoying my face here as much as I am. (Also, all you Faith Assembly people... that's definitely my Superchurch shirt I'm wearing.)

He was really cool.

It really liked my video camera.

That was probably the highlight of my day. That or seeing my teammates gorge themselves at this quasi-Western food place in town. They were so hungry for anything that wasn’t beans and rice—we’re all sort of on the brink of breakdowns here—that I think they were able to convince themselves they were at a regular Applebees or something. It was pretty great.

Otherwise, today has been hard, hard, hard. We’re doing this training right now, which boils down to hours upon hours of lecture time every day. I was looking at a picture today of me and my parents from graduation. Of course, I was missing them a bit, but I couldn’t get over how ridiculously happy I was to be done with school, done with going to class, done with hours upon hours of lectures. But here I am. UGH.

I had sort of a meltdown today. I was just done. Done listening to this guy go on and on. Done being patient with African time—that is, nothing running on time ever, always starting late, going even later (MUCH LATER). Done sitting in uncomfortable chairs, wearing uncomfortable skirts. Done eating beans and rice for every stinkin’ meal…

So I went on a run for lunch, just tore off out of campus and into the villages. Of course, running as a stress reliever is always a tricky thing for me, as God really took running away from me awhile ago as a way to break me, and my legs still kill from old stress fractures and injuries. But it turned out to be a nice escape, even though I'm limping around and sore.

Well, I guess it wasn’t much of an escape from Africa, though. School had just let out of something, so the dirt back roads I’ve been taking were full of school children in their adorable little sweaters. Kim and I went for a run the other morning and we were quite a sight for the people, but seeing this white girl running all alone with strange white cords running from her ears to a box (iPod) attached to her arm… that was just way too much for them to handle. Seriously, whole groups of teenagers (or even adults) would stop and stare at me as I went by. The little kids would chirp, “How are you?” – that’s about the only English they know. I did my best to throw out waves and “Harbari zenu!”s between gasping breaths (in some areas, if you don’t greet people, they think you’re a witch).

Anyway, it was nice. I’m still struggling to be positive, but most people here are in the same boat. I was able to go to town with my team later, like I said, and we had a good time together. And we ended the night with a hardcore prayer session, so that was even better. But, yeah, we need your prayers for team unity and working out some details of getting our things and ourselves into Sudan. And please pray against frustration during our training—this is only day two and we’re all ready to be done. (We have more than two weeks left!)

You’re prayers are coveted.

Sudan TIMO

I thought it might be nice to introduce you to my team. That's Jen (Massachusetts) on the back left, then Craig (Adelaide, Australia) and Cath (South Africa). Kim (Minnesota) is with me (new hair do') on the swings.

Calling home.

I just had to post these. Hilarious.
















This is me, trying to call my parents from a Safaricom phone on the streets of Machakos. They sure were getting a kick out of my inability to communicate with them.
















Craig took a photo, which freaked these ladies out. They kept asking if they could have a copy of the "snap."

In other news, I think I have little patches of ringworm all over my body. In fact, a lady I'm sharing the computer room with right now keeps reading off great facts about ringworm. Yay!

Planes, trains and (African) automobiles...

Today we went into town, which might be one of my best adventures yet. It’s about 2 kilos away*, so I really wanted to ride a boda-boda. (I’m guessing on that spelling.) A boda-boda (“bow-duh bow-duh”) is a bicycle with a glorified bookrack on the back—that is, there’s a sort of padded seat above the wheel.

So, yeah, I was all about the boda-bodas, but as we got walking, we didn’t see any of them milling about. We did happen upon a poor guy driving a three-wheeled taxi… thing. I really can’t describe it adequately. No words can do it justice. I think it’s probably a scooter-type thing with a seat built on the back and covered in a rickety frame with canvas strapped over it. Whatever, just know it was an incredible experience. We were bouncing all around in the thing, sticking our heads out of the canvas window cover things and howling as our poor bottoms were jolted with every bump. I’ll send the video home sometime soon, if I can. It’s great. Perhaps then you can appreciate more fully the greatness of this ride into town. I think the driver got annoyed with us, but I’m sure that was neither the first nor last time that will happen. (Whoops.)
















I did get my boda-boda experience on the way back from town. It was so cool, just riding along and looking at the countryside. Sure, there was some squealing as the guys nonchalantly took us through the busiest roundabout in town or as giant buses full of African’s screaming “wzungu!!!!!!” roared past, just inches from my elbows. But, still… so great.


















You can probably tell I’m still in the very “romantic” stage of my cultural transition here, so I look at everything with eyes of wonder and am still very open to trying (and yea even eating) new things.

I’m sure I’ll soon hit the next stage of adjustment, as I’ll probably cocoon back into any little Western thing I can find. We did some of that today, actually, as we raided the Naivasha (grocery/stuff store) for chocolate and biscuits (aka: cookies). I got so excited at seeing a KitKat, I bought three. And that was on top of four Cadbury bars. Yeah, I won’t lie: It was a bit of a buying frenzy. It was Craig, Kim and I—there was no calming force, just two hungry Americans and an impressionable (and equally famished) Aussie.

It’s a little strange, being a minority. It’s more of an issue here in Machakos, as it’s very rare to see one of us wzungus on the street. There are times when I’m more aware of my skin color than I’ve ever been! I wish I could say I understand some of the discrimination people go through here in the States, but, really, being white in Africa sets you apart in a different way. More than anything, it means you have money—money you can give them. (Apparently they didn’t get the memo on my being broke.)

Welcome to Machakos...

Just so you're all jealous, this is the view out my dorm room window at Scott Theological College in Machakos, Kenya.

We started our training today. Pray for me, as I hate, hate, hate long days of meetings. I have a hard time sitting still that long. :) But praise God, I'm sure he'll give me the grace to live through this. I know everything I'll learn here is super valuable.

Ok, I don't really have much time. I'll try to update this later in the week -- I won't have much access here.

Greetings again from Nairobi! This might be my last post before we take off to Machakos, but I wanted to tell you about a really sweet place we went to today called The Carnivore.

A disclaimer: It's totally a touristy, nzungu place. Totally. But that doesn't mean it's not great.

True to the name, it's all about meat. You just sit there as these men with giant sword things come by and offer you the strange meat they have on the swords. (Hopefully you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about from these pictures.)



It was so incredibly awesome. I ate ostrich and camel and crocodile and lamb and beef and chicken and... chicken gizzard. Oh my goodness, that's SO DISGUSTING. But I was going all out. Reason didn't kick in. Anyway, the camel and ostrich were incredible. And the crocodile wasn't half bad when you added some of the many wonderful sauces they offered.





This is Craig (the Aussie) and I, eating like it's our job. We took some really sweet video. I wish I could share it with you.

This is all the meat cooking on the coals. It was a meat-eaters dream. YUM.

Alright, I don't have much time. Have to run.

The luggage arrives!

We got a lot more of our luggage today!

It was all torn open and gone through, haha. Our box had a gaping hole in it; sort of like it'd be chewed up by some giant rat.

They stole all the conditioner we'd just bought in New York. (Conditioner and other white people things here are VERY EXPENSIVE and often watered down and bad. I just paid more than $10 for hair gel.)

We just have to laugh because we're left to wonder what some bald African man will do with a handful of bottles of conditioner... Haha.

Take me out to the ballgame...

Today all my baseball dreams came true. I taught my first African to play catch. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I finally rustled up Craig (the Aussie) to play toss with me outside. I've been going through withdrawal. Mark and I played all the time back at home.

It was all dark and stuff, but we caught the attention of the security guards. (This may leave you to wonder who was doing the security. Good question.) They eventually crowded around a passed ball and were studying it quite intently when I came up.

They looked at me and my mitt and asked how I caught the ball in my “hat.” (Hehehe.) So I tried to show them how the glove worked.

They were super entertained. I finally got one of them, Sumbi, to give it a go himself. He didn’t really understand the right-handed person putting the glove on the left hand thing. He kept trying to switch it.

It was amazing to see how foreign the idea was to him. He looked pretty goofy and awkward. Haha. Anyway, they were pleased with themselves and I promised I’d teach them more tomorrow, when the sun is out. (Teaching someone baseball in the dark seems like a horrible idea.)

Naturally, I’m pretty giddy. First, Sumbi. Next… the whole of Africa. :)

Camels and caves and matatus... oh my!

So, wow, I think this has been the longest week of my life! I can’t believe it’s only been seven days since I left Illinois—and only five since I left the States.

Yesterday was a very long, full day…

My Sudan TIMO teammate Kim and I decided Monday that we wanted to ride an ostrich. This may sound a little weird to you, but Kim’s friend did it while she was here, and riding atop a very strange bird seemed like an experience too random to pass up. So we set out to do just that.

We ended up outside of Nairobi in a little town called Kiambu. The ride there was terrifying. I’ll probably hit on that some other time, as transportation in Africa deserves a post of its own! Anyway, we went to a place called Paradise Lost, rumored to have said ostrich riding available.

Sadly, you could only FEED the ostriches—a far cry from saddling up on one, I must say!—but we happened upon a lot of other fun stuff to keep us entertained.

We hiked back to a beautiful water fall and explored some caves the Kenyan Freedom Fighters used during the war. We went back as far as a big cavern, from which there were shoot-offs that would take you all the way to Mount Kenya. That’s about a month-long journey! I can’t even imagine that. Anyway, here’s Kim in the caves.

And that’s Matt and I under the really sweet waterfall. Matt is here with this parents, Dave and Mary, who are going on from training to be dorm parents at Rift Valley Academy, AIM’s super-awesome school in northern Kenya. He’ll be a junior there. He, Kim and I have adopted each other as stand-in siblings. He’s a pretty cool little brother.

This is all of us, looking too cool for words at the bottom of the waterfall. This was Kim’s idea. I blame her for me looking so ridiculous.

Then we rode horses… and a camel. It’s an interesting thing, being on the back of a camel when it gets up from being on its knees. (That’s what’s going on in that picture, hence the weird looks on our faces.)

We did hang out with the ostrich for a while. I’ve decided ostriches are really scary animals. I was holding this leaf thing and it just went nuts on me. They get pretty good range with those crazy-looking necks of theirs, let me tell you. Anyway, it was strange. But don’t think for a second we’re going to stop in our quest to find a place to take one on, bareback style.

I can’t confirm that camels spit, but I can confirm that they make really weird noses and have a lot of saliva action going on inside their mouths. Disgusting.

Pray for our team...

Another one of our teammates, Craig, got here yesterday. He’s from Australia—the first Aussie to be on a TIMO team, no less. He’s a pretty cool guy. We’ll meet Cath—another teammate, from South Africa—on Friday or Saturday, but it will be nearly a month before we are united with the rest of our team.

We might not know each other, but the devil certainly has each one of us marked. From the very onset, he’s been working to gain a foothold among the three (and now four) of us who are here. I can feel myself being unusually easily annoyed or frustrated, focusing on the differences between us, especially with one of our teammates in particular. Kim and I talked about this today, because she really had a rough go of things with a teammate before.

Did you know that the number one reason missionaries leave the mission field is other missionaries? Yeah. Crazy, isn’t it? But it’s a very easy way for the devil to work. He’s not a dumb guy. (I hate when Christians—especially me—forget that the devil is very real, just as real as Christ, and we share this world with him. He lurks; let us not be ready!)

And so we’re not going to take this thing lightly. God has really but a heavy burden on my heart to pray for all of our teammates and for our time together. I’d appreciate your prayers to, as team unity is so critical to having an effective ministry. And bad relationships are not God-honoring!

The long and short of it.

Well, gang, I did it. The hair has been chopped. It's really, REALLY short.




Kim supervised the whole thing, keeping careful watch over the African hairdresser as she chopped away. Even Matt and Joe were there for moral support. It was quite the sight, this crazy foursome of wzungus (white people) making a ruckus about one of them getting a haircut. I’m sure we confused them even more by wanting to keep the hair. (I’m sending it home to Locks of Love.)

There was a lot of pointing, laughing and talking in Swahili. I’m sure they’re still talking about it today.

I'm in Kenya...

Hey gang! My gang and I finally arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, this morning, after a long two days of traveling and a lot of funny happenings. (Did I tell you I almost got hit by a car in London? Yeah, they drive on the other side of the road there. Duh Andi.)

Unfortunately, not all of our luggage got here. I'm missing one of my two bags, which is sad, but I got away lucky -- an AIM family with two little kids only found one of their 11 bags at baggage claim! It seems that half of the plane's stuff was left at London. Or at least that's what we're thinking. Everyone is missing *at least* one bag. So be praying for all that to come through -- we're hoping they will get here either tonight or tomorrow. Luckily, I have my essentials (toothbrush, Bible, baseball glove), so I could survive at least another week without my luggage.

I'm writing now from an internet cafe at a Nakumatt -- basically, the Kenyan version of Walmart. It's definitely a strange feeling, being a minority. Luckily, many people here speak English and they seem to be used to foreigners, as I haven't gotten many stares yet. (I remember being in China and being treated like a celebrity for my white skin and blonde hair.)

We haven't got to see much of the city yet -- just the area between the airport and our guest house -- but I can't wait to get out there and see what life is like. I haven't dared to experiment with food yet -- my first meal in Africa was... pizza... so pathetic, I know-- but, in my defense, there isn't much African eatin' here at Nakumatt.

I'm praying for some time to just relax and reload. It seems I've been going nonstop since -- gosh -- October, first with moving home, then support raising and, finally, making all the last-minute preparations for Africa. I keep saying things to myself like, "I'm in Africa" or "Here I am, moving to Africa," but nothing has really sunk in yet. It seems fatigue is clouding my sense of reality! Or maybe this is normal...

I hope to spend a lot of time with the Lord tonight and another good chunk of time sleeping. (Praise God for sleep. And beds parallel to the ground.) I'm sure I'll also try to enjoy some time with the other people who are here preparing for ABO (Africa-based orientation). It's awesome to talk and share with people who have the same heart you do, not only for the Lord, but for Africa.

London bridges falling down...

So, today I got to watch the England and Portugal's World Cup game in London!


Unfortunately, England lost on penalty kicks, which really made me sad.

My teammate Kim pretended to be sad with me. Actually, she and Jen (my other TIMO teammate) were super gracious to me in sitting beside me (and a large contingency of Brits) while I hung on every kick. It was great fun. Smashing, even.

Earlier, we had the chance to go into the city -- we have a 14-hour layover! -- and we saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace and a whole spattering of adorable English telephone booths. (That's Kim on the left and Jen on the right -- both Sudan TIMO teammates.)

We decided that everything in London looks like it came straight out of a toy village -- from the bobbys on horseback to the giant brick buildings, guards with huge fuzzy black hats to those silly telephone booths.

While this all might have the appearance of a vaction, trust me, it's far from that. I feel like 16 hours on a plane, coupled with a couple dozen more in various airports, has earned us a bit of touristy time. We've had a lot of funny hangups, too. When we were trying to check our luggage into storage in London, the fire alarm went off. So we had to stand there forever waiting for them to put out a fire. And then in the city, while I was buying my mad-style, 70%-off England soccer jersey, this GINORMOUS gay pride parade went by. It was definitely a nice reminder of the depravity of man and how much work there is to be done -- Romans 1, right here in London.

Alright, I've got two adorable MK toddlers wanting my attention, so I'm off. Pray for our travel into Kenya -- we leave tonight (London time) and get to Kenya early in the morning (Kenya time). Then we'll be there for a few days before taking off to Kenya. Pray especially for team unity and for sleep on the plane!